Charity worker in £20k mobile phone fraud
ACHARITY worker who fraudulently stole £20,000 worth of mobile phones from her employer has avoided jail.
Lucie Holland worked as an agent at Matrix247 in Haslingden and doctored more than 20 phone orders over a 40-month period to obtain extra handsets, a court heard.
The 47-year-old also took advantage of a staff member’s hospitalisation with a brain haemorrhage and later blamed ‘incompetent’ customer service staff and a pregnant worker for her ‘bouts of forgetfulness’, prosecutors said.
Holland, who volunteers at homeless and animal charities, started working at Matrix247 on Kingsway in 2002 in direct sales because of her ‘experience in selling mobile phones to businesses’.
Prosecutor Lisa Worsley told Burnley Crown Court that in August 2011 director Stephen Pritchard was informed that Holland had defrauded the company.
The court was told that ‘due to her personal circumstances, directors taking pity upon her and her asking for forgiveness’ she was given a ‘second chance’ and brought back as a ‘self-employed’ agent.
Miss Worsley said new procedures were put in place to stop the ‘ same situation happening again’, however in June 2017 Mr Pritchard received an anonymous letter stating Holland was committing fraud.
An investigation found that more than 20 accounts were defrauded totalling around £20,000 and it ‘directly affected the company and staff’.
In a statement, Mr Pritchard said one employee was left ‘extremely upset’ when emails between Holland and customers showed the defendant ‘blaming customer service staff for being incompetent’ and a member of staff’s pregnancy for ‘bouts of forgetfulness’.
Miss Worsley said a staff member was signed off work for several months because of a brain haemorrhage and Holland ‘used many of the instances to push orders through customer services in a fraudulent manner’.
When Holland was challenged by company directors she said ‘I will be honest, yes I did it’ but disputed the £20,000 figure.
Holland, of Shaw Street, Bury, pleaded guilty to fraud and theft and was given a 10-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months with a 30-day rehabilitation activity requirement and 100 hours’ unpaid work.